Provides a unique and accessible understanding of Sallust and his influence on writing the history of Rome

Gaius Sallustius Crispus ('Sallust', 86-35 BCE) is the earliest Roman historian from whom any works survive. His two extant writings chronicle crucial moments of a political, social, and ethical revolution with profound consequences for his own life and those of his audience.After the Past: Sallust on History and Writing History examines what it meant to write the history of contentious eventsCatilines famous rebellion in 63 BCE and the war waged against the North African king Jugurtha fifty years earlierwhile their effects were still so vividly felt.

One of the first book-length treatments of Sallust in over fifty years, the text offers a comprehensive reading of Sallusts works using the tools of narratology and intertextual analysis to reveal the changing functions of historiography at the end of the Roman Republic. Author Andrew Feldherrs comprehensive approach examines the literary strategies used by Sallust and many of the most interesting and significant aspects of the historians accomplishment while advancing the study of historiography as a literary form, reconsidering its relationship to rival genres such as rhetoric and tragedy. Pursuing a focused and distinctive scholarly argument, this book:

Provides a comprehensive approach to Sallusts extant worksExplores how Sallust helped his readers to reflect on their own relationship with their tumultuous pastContributes to understanding Roman conceptualizations of space and of writingChallenges the core assumption that literary historiography of the time period is essentially rhetorical nature

After the Past: Sallust on History and Writing History is an accessible and useful resource for students of Latin literature and Roman history from the advanced undergraduate through professional levels, and for all those with an interest in historiography as a literary genre in Greco-Roman antiquity and in the literary history of the late Republic and triumviral period.

Andrew Feldherr is Professor of Classics at Princeton University. He works on ­Latin Literature, with a particular interest in historiography and the poetry of the ­Augustan period. A main focus of his work has been on how political and social forces transform conceptions of the function of literature during the Roman Republic and Empire.

Acknowledgments ix

Introduction 1

1 Lives and Times 18

2 Words and Deeds 52

3 Pity and Envy: The Emotions in Sallustian Historiography 97

4 Tragic Jugurtha: Numidia, New Media, New Medeas 136

5 Lines in the Sand: The Representation of Space in the Jugurtha 168

6 Brevitatis Artifex: Sallust as Text 213

Epilogue 268

Abbreviations 284

Bibliography 285

Index of Passages 301

Index 309